"And the women, despite wearing long veils and peering through netting, pirouetted in their perfumes like gusts of war…"

"On souk day, people act as if in a trance."

"Mohsen Ramat hesitates for a long time before he decides to join the crowd gathering in the square. The authorities h…"

"Mohsen loathes public executions. They make him conscious of his vulnerability, they sharpen his perception of his li…"

"The first time he watched someone put to death--a murderer, whose throat was slit by a member of his victim's family-…"

"But time has passed, and scaffolds have come to seem more and more a part of ordinary life, so much so that the citiz…"

"For him and everyone else, death is only a banality. Moreover, everything is banality."

"Kabul has become the antechamber to the great beyond: a dark antechamber, where the points of reference are obscure; …"

"In the old days--that is, several light-years ago--he loved to take an evening stroll along the boulevards of Kabul. …"

"this is the reason why the wearing of the burqa has become a necessity, more to preserve women from malicious eyes th…"